Green with Envy

This past week, a good friend of the Angry White Loner's got engaged to be married. It is one of those inevitable things, I've been told, to occur after you've been dating someone for a while and you find out that you like each other a whole bunch. More than a whole bunch, actually.

This will be this particular friend's second marriage. The Angry White Loner has other friends who have been married more than once, including a few currently on a third marriage and even one who has been hitched four times.

The Angry White Loner, however, has not even been engaged once, let alone married once.

What's my point in bringing up this little tidbit? Because anything and everything I know about marriage is certainly limited and is from the point-of-view of one who is, to this point, merely an observer. That is acknowledged.

Another tidbit: All of the Angry White Loner's siblings are now married, including his four younger siblings. Years ago, when the first of these younger siblings announced his engagement, the parents approached the Angry White Loner, somewhat as if they were walking on eggshells, and asked: "Are you mad?"

Having been put into this situation for the first time, I was certainly caught off guard by the question. I wasn't aware I was supposed to be anything but happy for my brother—certainly anything but mad. He and his fiancée were very happy together. Fortunately, I could honestly answer that no, I wasn't in the least bit mad. In fact, in the years since then, I would say that my relationship with this sibling has only improved.

Have chick flicks, as well as such plays as Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, taught us that siblings are supposed to get married in a certain order? Perhaps that is what factored into the parents' view of it all.

In writing this post, I am also reminded of the moment, years ago, when a female friend of mine mentioned that a friend of hers was getting married for the third time and—whether this was in gest or not, I'll never know—uttered:

Why can't I get married just once?!

Another way of saying it might be: When is it my turn?

It's a rhetorical question—I didn't dare attempt an answer—and one with, to be sure, no simple answer(s). I have also found that it is a query that is very present in the minds of many of the mid-singles I associate with on a weekly basis but is not often one that is discussed out loud. In fact, I wished we discussed it more often at our class.

The best answer I have come up with to that $64,000 Question is this: I don't know. I don't know why things work out the way they do. I don't know why, to borrow a couple of musical metaphors, Rod Stewart once sang that "some guys have all the luck," while others "still haven't found what (they're) looking for," going well into their 30s and 40s and beyond—or not at all in this lifetime—without finding someone else with whom to share this mortal journey.

There are a few simple lessons, however, that I have learned—again, stated as an outsider and an observer. Principally: Envy, whomever or whatever it is directed at, is not a healthy emotion to have. It can fester and infect the soul like a foul disease does to the body. It is also not an attractive characteristic in someone anyone would want in a spouse. Neither is moping or being caught up in your singleness.

In addition: You stand a much better chance at meeting new people, ones who want the same thing you do, if you put yourself in situations or places where these people congregate rather than playing hard to get, Osama bin Laden style. Kindness is attractive, as is knowing how to say "please" and "thank you." If I knew what the Young Women values were, I would list them here, because they are all attractive qualities, too.

Along this same line, an encouraging piece of information was shared with me today at church by my home teacher: His 50-something sister just got married for the eighth—eighth!—time. The difference between this marriage and the other seven? It was her first temple marriage. What he conveyed, in a Sunday School lesson about Rebekah and the importance of marriage in the covenant, is that you have a better chance at attaining a temple marriage if you date temple-worthy people, or those who are working to become such. Also, some things are worth waiting and sacrificing for.

Hope Springs Eternal

Recently, a couple of my friends got married. To each other.

What sets these friends apart from the many other friends of mine who get married - this is Utah, after all, so having friends get married is not that uncommon of an occurrence - is that each of them, on separate occasions and a number of years previously, sustained traumatic and life-altering brain injuries. One of them is also confined to a wheelchair.

Out of respect to my friends, and without going much more into the situation, suffice me to say that watching this couple's courtship progress and develop on a weekly basis (I know them both through a mid-singles institute class I attend Wednesday nights) over the course of the past couple of years has been, as I look back on it, a rather awe-inspiring thing. It's not the traditional, Taylor Swift-type love story, but it is a love story nonetheless. And it has led me to one bona fide conclusion:

Sometimes, God directly lends a hand.

"Soul mates are fiction and an illusion," taught President Spencer W. Kimball. Finding one's spouse is largely left up to us individually and as couples, despite our imperfect natures and the mistakes we all-too-frequently make. In my case, it's at least twice that often (making mistakes, I mean).

Nevertheless, on rare occasions, I believe, the Lord steps in does something to help a relationship move along to its goal. Adam and Eve, for example, were meant for each other - no questions about that. Isaac's servant was guided specifically to Rebekah to find a wife for his master. Nephi and his brothers were also commanded to return to Jerusalem to find wives and were led to Ishmael's family.

I believe that such was the case with my two friends who were recently united in wedded bliss. That's not gospel doctrine or fact here but just a page from the Epistle of Jon.

And so, the $64,000 question is: Why does he intervene on these rare occasions when so many of us are left to our own devices?

I believe that the answer, in each case, is to teach us something important. In the case of Adam and Eve, the lesson is kind of a no-brainer, involving such things as "multiplying and replenishing the Earth" and things of that nature. A book I'm reading now also raises the issue that one of the oft-forgotten commandments given to Adam and Eve is that they were to remain together, and once Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Adam faced a choice: eat of the forbidden fruit, be cast out with Eve, and remain with her, or stay alone in Eden. (Many men in our time, the book points out, choose to separate from their Eves in favor of what they perceive to be an Eden - be it another person, a job, etc.) In the case of Isaac and Rebekah, as well as Nephi and his family, the lesson is about the importance of marriage in the covenant, assuming that Seminary video taught me right.

In the case of my friends, well, I believe the lesson is simply this: Whatever challenges life has thrown at you; whatever hell you've lived through, even when you thought you couldn't survive it; and even though you may feel like there's no hope left for you, be it due to health or age or job loss or shattered dreams or self-doubt or what the adversary is whispering to you or whatever it may be, there is always hope.

Always.

Hopes and Dreams

In improv, we play a game called "Musical" in which we create - you guessed it - a musical. However, instead of having the three hours' length of a Les Misérables or a My Fair Lady with which to make Broadway magic happen live, one of the challenges of this game is to condense (cram?) the plot and songs for a musical into an eight- or 10-minute short-form delivery.

Impossible? You might think so. But somehow, we make it happen time and again.

Anyway, one of the key elements of putting together this kind of "Musical" is the inclusion of a protagonist, who sings what we call a "Hopes and Dreams" song to state what he/she wants out of life. Lo and behold, we spend the next seven minutes or so making those hopes and dreams become a reality.

Real life, unfortunately, does not always turn out this way. What we hope, dream, and, quite often, yearn and pray for does not come to pass, or at least it does not transpire in the way we expect it would.

One of the best examples of someone's expectations not being fulfilled, at least in my mind, is illustrated by a rather poignant - and heartbreaking - scene in the movie (500) Days of Summer. The protagonist, Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is desperately in love with Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel. In the scene I refer to, the screen shows a side-by-side comparison of Tom's expectations - I daresay his hopes and dreams - of an encounter with Summer, with the other half of the screen showing what really takes place. The problem is that the "Principle of Least Interest" (something I actually remember from college; you can Google it if you want), which states that the person who cares the least about a relationship has all of the power, is at work here. Summer is not as interested in Tom as Tom is interested in Summer, and, in the side of the scene depicting reality, he is disappointed time and again as his expectations of her loving him back are unmet.

I identify with this scene because the same sort of "great expecations" (if I can borrow a phrase from Dickens) scenarios have played out in my head multiple times only to be crushed and destroyed by reality. I'm sure that many of you could say the same of some of your own experiences. The Principle of Least Interest can be a harsh teacher but a teacher nonetheless.

However, I don't think the answer is to stop hoping and dreaming, for, as Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." To also borrow a line from Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband: "When you dream, dream big; as big as the ocean blue. 'Cause when you dream, it might come true." Anyone who ever accomplished anything worthwhile has followed this train of thought and see it to its fruition.

Something Tom learns at the end of (500) Days of Summer - and this is a SPOILER ALERT for those who still want to see the film - is that summer is followed by autumn. In Tom's case, his relationship with Summer is very literally followed by meeting a girl named Autumn.

The application, as I take it, is that one unmet expectation does not necessarily mean another unmet expectation. In other words, it's still good and worthwhile to hope and dream, even though some people come into our lives to wake us from those dreams or even serve as nightmares of a sort. Granted, we have to wake up from those dreams and go to work and be patient as we try and try again, but there is a happy song waiting at the end of your show. Or my next improv show.